- UTATA is a uniform act. This is a form of legislation used on matters governed on a state-by-state basis. A uniform act is drafted by representatives from multiple states and serves as a model that individual states can adapt, thus giving greater consistency across states. The majority of states have adopted UTATA into state legislation.
- UTATA covers circumstances in which a person has set up a living trust. This is similar to the trust automatically created when a person dies, commonly referred to as the estate, but the living trust is created when the person is alive. The main reason for doing this is so any assets held by the living trust do not have to go through the probate process after the person dies.
- Each local implementation of UTATA allows residents of the relevant state to include a pour-over provision. This is a statement of intentions that means any property not in the living trust when the person dies should be transferred into the living trust. Its main purpose is to cover assets the person acquired after setting up the living trust but did not add to the trust before dying. Normally a pour-over provision only needs to be used if the assets being transferred total more than $100,000.
If a pour-over provision has to be used, there will need to be a probate process. This is normally a formality and simply exists to give formal authority to the transfer into the living trust. - UTATA was updated in 1991 to clarify some ambiguities in the original version. Most notably, the clarification confirmed a pour-over provision can be used for a living trust even if the person who set up the trust did not put any assets into it before dying.
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